by Daniel Caet
“What you did was done thinking that you helped her, it is her who has distorted your help, your faith and your love,” said looking at me straight in the eyes. “I do not think you have lost her, Helel, but I think you will have done if you do not do everything in your power to stop her. Only you can do that. If as you say, you created the monster, then only you can destroy it.”
Those words somehow made me wake up. It was getting dark and Liliath had not come back yet, so I decided to go to the temple to look for her. Sadith promised me that she would stay with the children and I ran to the city. I arrived at the temple without breath. I did not want to transport there to prevent someone from seeing me, but the race to the temple left me without air. It was late night when I reached the doors that, to my surprise, were guarded by two soldiers. The doors of the temple were always open for anyone who wanted to access to present offerings or consult the oracle, so the presence of those two soldiers was out of place. My surprise was even greater when those soldiers prevented me from entering.
“I come to pick up my wife who is inside the temple. What's this all about? Access to the temple is free.”
“Not tonight,” answered one of them. “The temple has been closed by order of Gilgamesh so go back where you came from.”
“My wife is inside,” I repeated. “I need to get in. It will be only a moment.”
“It would be better for you to look for your wife in the taverns of the city,” the other soldier replied. “If at this time she is not with you at home, she may have found a substitute.”
The laughter of the two soldiers stung me like salt in an open wound, but I ignored them and walked away from the temple stairs. When I was in a place where no one could see me, I transported myself to the atrium inside the temple just behind the soldiers who did not notice anything. I crossed the atrium and went to the secluded area where only the students chosen by the temple could access. I arrived at a huge room that was lit by torches arranged in line on the walls. The whole room was made of stone and in the center a large altar of black stone was the only element. What I saw on the altar made me fall to my knees. Liliath, completely naked, lay on the stone while Arpasetaj, Gilgamesh's supreme counselor, also naked, penetrated her making her moan. Her body arched with pleasure as he entered her again and again holding her thighs in his hands. I felt my heart speed up and it seemed like it was going to come out of my mouth. I wanted to scream, but the stupor of what I was seeing paralysed the words in my throat. Suddenly, my eyes looked better at the scene that was before me and it was as if a kind of veil fell to the ground. In the new scene, Arpasetaj had been replaced by his true form, that of a dark-skinned demon, clawed, with eye sockets full of flames and two large horns coming out of his head. A Dhorak demon, a race that I thought was extinct and that I had helped exterminate eons before. But there he was, in front of me, fornicating with Liliath who gave herself up anxiously to his body. Suddenly, that demon turned his head to give me a cynical smile.
“Welcome, Helel,” he said. “Do you want to join?”
Liliath also turned her head and sat up slightly.
“My husband, you have a special talent to spoil the best moments!”
She rose slowly from the altar, completely naked and did not bother to cover herself. Standing there, her eyes challenged me. I had seen that look before, the day a man came out burning at a wedding. I knew what she could do in that state, but I did not care. There, on my knees in front of them, the anger for their betrayal piled up inside me, my fists clenched against the cold floor tiles.
"Oh! What is that I perceive, Helel?” said the demon in a throaty voice. “Did you really think that we would leave a creature of this power in your hands? You are more innocent than we thought. Everything has been a pantomime to have you tied to this miserable human existence that you have embraced so happily. The pregnancy was an unexpected surprise, it's true! But it's nothing that cannot be fixed.”
The creature came forward to Liliath and came a few steps closer to me crouching to place himself at my height.
“It did not have to be like that, you know? At first, we hoped that you would be able to recover your full potential even if you were in a human body and with the help of Liliath have you under our control. But I guess the master was right, we should have eliminated you from the first moment, fix what those above did not complete properly. But well, thanks to you we discovered the power of Liliath. And many other things,” he said, caressing Liliath's bare breasts. “And fortunately, she was more than willing to collaborate with our cause.”
Liliath responded to his words with a malevolent smile.
“My poor Helel,” she said, covering herself with her cloak. “The truth is that I liked you, very much in fact, until you became this pathetic creature that only wants to be one more among men. Well, I will not be the one to take away that desire, if you want to be a man, you will die like a man!”
The wave of power hit me full on and threw me to the other side of the room making me hit one of the columns and then fall to the ground like a dead weight. The pain was unbearable. That blow was followed by two others which threw me back into the air, and then silence. It seemed that Liliath had thought me finished. My body was bleeding on the floor and my bones were broken, but the anger was still inside me. I felt how my bones somehow fused again and a flame of power that I had not felt since before my fall grew in me. My sword materialised in my hand, and I could find the strength to get up slowly. Liliath and the devil had their backs to me. Suddenly they turned around.
“Well, after all, you have more resistance than I expected.”
“It takes more than a bitch like you to kill me.” I managed to mumble.
“We'll see that,” she said, throwing another sling of power in my direction, but this time my body remained straight and countered her power with another bigger sling that threw her against the altar. Her face showed a mixture of surprise and fear that only made my power even greater, and I prepared to launch a new attack, but the devil interposed and caused a column of fire to rise between them and me.
“A very fun exercise, Helel, but I wonder how much time you are willing to sacrifice fighting with us instead of trying to save your family.”
My heart stopped in my chest. My hands began to tremble.
“What do you mean, damn?”
“Did you really think we would leave loose ends? At this very moment our master is taking care of those you call your family. Go ahead, Helel, maybe you'll arrive in time to see how he crushes their skulls.”
Immediately the fire consumed both in a large ball that died out in a second leaving only the emptiness behind it. The rage inside me unleashed and a scream came from my throat rising to the heavens. In response, the whole temple was trembling as if a terrible earthquake were shaking it up and down, and the walls were beginning to collapse. Shouts came to me from other parts of the temple, priests no doubt that were trapped by the rubble of the huge building, but none of that mattered to me. Without waiting for a moment, I was transported to our house. I went through all the rooms, but I did not find anyone. None of the servants answered my screams and there was no sign of the children. I ran through the garden of Armesh's house and went in hoping to find the children safe and sound with Sadith or Suriath. The smell of death flooded my nose immediately, a bittersweet smell, the smell of blood and viscera, early putrefaction. I entered the courtyard and the image I found made me fall to my knees. On the patio floor, Suriath's body lay inert in a huge pool of blood. Her throat had been severed so deeply that the head was almost separated from the rest of the body. Her eyes were wide open in a gesture of genuine panic. When I turned my gaze to where her eyes were pointing I had to make an effort not to vomit. Armesh's body was nailed to one of the patio walls by his forearms, his head hanging. They had cut him opened and, in the ground, at his feet, there was a mess of guts and blood. Seeing the man who in those recent years had been a father to me, dead in that savage way destroyed my heart and I broke in
to a scream possessed by rage. A laugh behind me made me turn quickly. I found him standing on the roof of the house, looking at me, his sword still bloody in his hand and wings outstretched hiding the moon light.
“You!”
“Hello brother,” he replied with a broad smile. “Long time no see! Do you like the gift I have given you to celebrate our reunion?”
The anger accumulated in me made me transport to his side in a second and strike a blow with my sword. But he stopped it with one of his wings throwing me through the air back to the patio floor.
“Well, I see that you have not lost the nerve. That's fine! But I recommend that you save your energies, you know that you have nothing to do in front of an archangel and, anyway, you will need them for what I have prepared for you.”
The creature that was before me was Raphael, in past times the healer, to whom my father granted power to cure all evil. But somehow, that creature created to heal had been responsible for those horrible deaths.
“My little Helel,” he said as he descended to where I was standing. “Always so idealistic, always convinced that the human being is the best creation of our father. And look where all this has taken you. Now you are one of them and like them, you are surrounded by death and putrefaction. It's not that it was a very successful movement, do not you think?”
His cynical smile lit up his face as he walked around me like the cat that plays with his prey. His words somehow awoke memories in me, memories before my fall, bitter memories of betrayal; not to me, but to everything my father had created.
“I have to admit that the beginning of all this was certainly surprising. Your stupid opposition to our domination of these slugs you call men should have ended with your death. If you had not opposed the destruction of Eridu, if you had not tried to prevent us from taking our rightful place as the sole masters of our father's creation. But no, you had to defend these monkeys, shout that this was not our father's will. Who did you think you were to face us? Did you really think you were better than us, capable of interpreting his will better than us? Everything must have been fixed with your death, but you complicated everything with your flight. The guards must have killed you before you got here.
His eyes now stared at me like trying to read in a soul that no longer existed. I tried to gather all my strength to rise again against him, but my legs failed me.
“The surprise was that someone else decided to do the work for us,” he continued. “You have to recognise that removing your soul, so you become exactly what you defended was a most ironic blow. Absolutely delicious and very useful for us if the idiots of the guards would not have given you for dead leaving the job half done.
He finished the sentence with a kick that raised me from the ground throwing me against one of the walls to hit the tiles again. My head was spinning, and I was unable to sit up.
“How do you feel, Helel? What is it like to be betrayed by the one to whom you have dedicated all your devotion and existence? Your eternal love for our father and his clay toys has not helped you except to suffer. Where was he when you fell? Where is he now? You thought you were special, his favourite son. Well, it seems that after all you were no more than any of us. It has been eons without us hearing his voice, abandoned by our same creator and, did you really think that his hand would come to your aid? He has abandoned you as an angel and as a man, brother.”
Those words awoke a spark in me that fuelled the flame of my rage. With great effort, I got up on all fours, standing up afterwards and I looked him straight in the eye.
“Abandoned, yes. Abandoned by the heavenly father who created me, but here among men I was born again, born to a new life, one that I will fight to live.”
His laughter echoed throughout the courtyard.
“Very funny, Helel. Incredibly dramatic. But tell me something, to what life exactly do you refer? The woman who left you for a demon’s cock, the bunch of guts you called father or that pair of rats you have for bastards? By the way, I still have to tear off their little heads from the rest of their body.”
That phrase opened my eyes. Rafael did not know where the children were and that meant maybe they were still alive. Liliath must have sent them somewhere out of my reach to hurt me and, without intending it, maybe she had saved their lives.
“My children are in a place where neither you nor any of our people can ever find them,” I lied.
“Oh really? We both know that this is not true. You have entered the house trying to find them, Helel. Wherever they are, it is clear they are as far from my reach as yours. The difference is that I can feel them, brother.”
My face must have expressed surprise even for a second.
“But of course, you have not noticed, right? Your human body limits you enormously. I know you felt something when you met my son Gilgamesh, but that time it was me who was behind the panel of the throne room which accentuated the feeling. With your bastards the sensation is still very attenuated, enough for me to feel them, but too fragile for you to have noticed.”
What Rafael was saying did not make any sense. Only the angels and the Nephilim generated that kind of vibration that the angels could perceive. My children were human. And yet, he had no reason to lie to me in that. If so, that meant that some of my old angelic essence had passed to my children but then, some of that essence had to live in me.
“Rafael,” I said, “if Gilgamesh is your son, you know the love of a father for his children, I beg you, do what you want with me, but leave the children alone.”
“Love? Please, do not be ridiculous. I do not feel any love for Gilgamesh or any other of my children. They are soldiers. Creatures created to assist us in the subjugation of men. Useful as our eyes, ears and hands, but I will not hesitate to rip out their heart myself as soon as they are no longer of use to me. Of course, they do not know it.”
His words were those of a monster. How could such a beautiful creature, created in the image and likeness of my father, have become that? If that was possible, if my father had allowed that, it really did not matter if he had abandoned us or not. In both situations it was clear that he did not care about anything, that he was behaving with us just as Rafael behaved with his children. That thought plunged me into the greatest sadness. Truly I was alone. Abandoned by my father, by the woman I loved, the only people who had shown me some tenderness and love were dead because of me, and my children had disappeared. I let my sword disappear and put my head in my hands wishing that none of that had happened.
“Enough talking, we’ve played this game too long, Helel. It's time to finish.”
I saw his sword rise in the air and strike the blow that should kill me. The following seconds seemed eternal to me. I expected to feel the edge of his sword cutting my head, feel pain or stop feeling it forever. A small part of me for a second was recreated in the idea of dying, resting at last. However, the sword did not come down. My arm, reacting automatically to the idea of dying, had risen and my sword, bright as the sun, stopped his. Rafael's eyes stared at me full of surprise and then I knew that was my chance. With a titanic effort I launched Rafael and his sword flying backwards just to the place where I had just transported myself to. Rafael's eyes widened when he noticed that in his fall he had just fallen on my sword that had pierced his chest cleanly.
Immediately a scream came from his throat and his body disintegrated in an explosion of light that blinded me.
I understood that I could not stay there, if I wanted to find my children again, I needed to stay alive. Without thinking twice and without paying attention to the enormous sadness that invaded my heart, I silently said goodbye to Armesh, Suriath and everything that had been my life during those years and transported myself as far as my strength allowed.
Pilgrim
Loneliness is a disease that devours you inside until there is nothing left of what you were, not a drop of your essence. My escape from the Armesh’s house opened the doors of my heart to it, and it did a perfect job. Many time
s, I have been asked why I am the way I am, the answer is simple, betrayal leads to loneliness and loneliness creates monsters.
The last forces that I could gather had been enough to transport me to a place in the mountains, a place ironically according to what was left of my existence, a dead place, without an iota of life, only full of hard rock and dust, like my heart. I dragged myself as far as I could into a small cave carved out of the rock, and there my forces completely abandoned me, rendering me unconscious. In my unconsciousness the images of what happened intermingled with others created no doubt by my guilt and tormented me in a terrible way. I could see how Armesh, hanging from that wall in the patio, stared at me and with a cynical smile told me:
“Do you see what you've done, Helel? I'm dead, you killed me. You who are nothing but death have brought death to my house. Will you help me pick up my guts from the ground?”
My eyes were then directed to my hands and my clothes that were completely bloodied, and then I realised that it was not Armesh's blood but my own that dyed my tunic. When I raised my eyes, Rafael’s face told me with a smile:
“Did you really think you could save them from us?”
My mind tormented me repeating those images over and over again until I finally regained consciousness. My body trembled, I was frozen, I could feel the blood stop flowing through my body, I felt I was dying. And I wanted to die. A part of me finally found rest in the idea of death, of disappearing as if I had never existed, of erasing with me all the evil I had caused. Nothing could seem more welcoming to me than emptiness, not being, oblivion. But even the consolation of death was not within my reach. Now I was human and humans cling to life as leeches to the body. No matter how desperate you are, how much you wish to die, there is always a small flame within you that clings to your existence wanting to survive, and now that flame was mine too. I raised my hand with the few strengths left and my mind did the rest. The fire appeared before me burning with force without any fuel, a flame floating in the air. Fed by my human nature, that flame reminded me at the same time that there was very little of human in me. My body slowly regained temperature and the tremors disappeared. My mind cleared, and it shouted the details of my reality back at me. I was alone, I had been abandoned and betrayed, not once but several times. Everything I loved was lost, dead because of me, but not by my hand. All? No, not everything. My children could be alive anywhere, but even the hope of seeing them again had been taken from me. My mind did not stop wondering why. Why had they done that to me? Why had my father allowed so much pain? Why did all the beings who claimed to have loved me betrayed me in some way? The answer came to my head like a scream. You are weak. And that cry was engraved in my mind with fire. It was true. I had been weak. Too weak to impose the truth of my father by force on my brothers. Too weak to keep love from making me his slave. Too weak to accept my nature. So weak that I accepted the condemnation of a human body without fighting to avoid it. So weak that I let myself be manipulated by smaller creatures. I who had been created in the image of my father, I who was the light of dawn, I had believed myself human, had loved humans and had let them betray me.